The Top 20 Country Love Songs of All Time - Number 10

by Jim Poulton

Patsy Cline - I Fall to Pieces

If my wife had her way, every song in our top ten would be by Patsy Cline … Not that there’s anything wrong with that ... Cline was responsible for a string of Country love songs that all but single-handedly defined the genre. There’s just something about her: an innocent hayseed (she was the daughter of a blacksmith and a seamstress), always just a little bit awkward, appealing but not runway-model beautiful. But when she started to sing, the strength of her character, and maybe the realities of her own losses, came out in every tone and nuance.

Cline rose to national fame between the years 1957 and 1963, when she tragically died in a plane crash. She recorded I Fall to Pieces in 1961, and the song became her first #1 hit on the Country charts, and was her second song to cross over into the Pop charts. Written by Hank Cochran and Harlan Howard, I Fall to Pieces at first worried Cline – she thought it’s Pop style didn’t suit her own. When the recording was completed, however, she said that she had finally found her own voice.

See a biography of Patsy Cline here.